Madman’s Island. (First edition, in dust jacket, with a signed presentation inscription by the author)

Sydney : Cornstalk Publishing Company, 1927. Octavo, bright original red cloth (slightly pushed at head of spine), lettered in black on upper panel and spine, in the original dust jacket with illustration by Edgar A. Holloway (edges slightly rubbed), advertisements of ‘Some interesting books’ to lower panel and flaps, printed advertisement for ‘The Famous Bellbird Series of Books for Boys and Girls’ verso (old sellotape reinforcements to folds verso); ownership wet stamp of J. G. McCredie, Woollahra to front free-endpaper, collection bookplate of Ralph O. Warne to half-title; signed presentation inscription to the title-page ‘To Ralph Warne, a true story. Ion Idriess’; pp. 228; frontispiece illustration and one additional illustration facing p. 60 by Holloway; top- and fore-edges with spotting, scattered foxing (largely confined to the preliminaries), a fine copy.

The author’s first book, a legendary rarity in Australian literature.  

Madman’s Island is the first novel published by Ion Idriess. As the author’s inscription in the present copy suggests, the core of the story is autobiographical in nature, although at the insistence of his publisher, George Robertson, certain aspects of the narrative were fictionalised and romanticised. In the novel, Jack Burnett and his friend George decide to go prospecting for gold and minerals on an uninhabited island in the Great Barrier Reef, North Queensland. After the pair have subsisted for months on a diet of speared fish and giant crabs, George, who is suffering from a past war injury, eventually goes mad and attempts to kill Jack, forcing Jack into a desperate game of survival against both his island companion and the elements. Jack discovers a cache of opium hidden by Japanese smugglers, and evades their pursuit with the aid of a romantic love interest, later selling the opium to a merchant in Cairns.

This fictionalised tale is in fact based on Idriess’s own life experience: for approximately seven months between 1920 and early 1921, he was marooned on Howick Island off Cape Melville in Queensland with a friend he had gone prospecting with. They had landed on the island with a good quantity of supplies, the plan being that the cutter which took them there would return in one month’s time to collect them – but the cutter never returned. After their supplies ran out, the pair resorted to spearing fish and catching crabs, which they lived off exclusively for five months. Passing ships were signalled but failed to stop. Idriess’s friend did indeed have a war injury, which along with the monotony of island survival, according to Idriess, sent him mad and prompted him to attempt to murder his companion. When Idriess finally hailed a ship by swimming out to sea, his friend refused to leave the island. Idriess was taken to Cooktown where a rescue mission was mounted and his mate was collected.

Idriess kept a diary while on the island, which was used as the basis for his book. He sold the story to George Robertson in 1925. However, the publisher insisted that a romantic element be woven in to boost sales, and so the opium smuggling and a female character were both introduced to spice up the narrative. The book was not particularly well received, though. Much later on, after Idriess had achieved success as a writer, he rewrote Madman’s Island as a true life memoir, republishing it as a non-fiction account in 1938. This version, in contrast to the original, sold extremely well and was subsequently reissued several times. A facsimile of the first edition was published in 2002.

The records of the publisher, George Robertson, indicate that although 2200 copies of the first edition were printed, only 300 were sold; presumably the remainder were pulped. Examples of the original 1927 edition rarely appear in the market. Furthermore, we can find no published record of an example in the dust jacket, nor of an example signed by Idriess, ever being offered for public sale. The unique copy of the rare first edition we offer here is, therefore, all the more desirable for having both a dust jacket in exceptionally fine condition, as well as being inscribed and signed by the author.

References:

BURNETT, Ross. An Idriess bibliography. Uralla : Australian Book Collector, 2008, 1.1

“Marooned”. The Telegraph, Brisbane, Queensland, 23 February 1923. p. 6.

Provenance:

John Grant McCredie (1912-1988), Australian marine artist, his stamp ‘J.G. McCredie, “Craigstone,” 7 Magney St., Woollahra’ to recto of the front free-endpaper.

Ralph Oswald Warne (1921-?), inscribed to him by Idriess on the title-page, and with his bookplate to the half-title.

private collection, Western Australia